Urban Alliance´s mission is to integrate modern communication technologies in the built environment in order to create interactive public spaces and objects. Urban Alliance combines expertise in design, content production, engineering and construction. This way UA is a one-stop-shop for tun-key mediatecture solutions. Urban Alliance works for developers, governments, advisers and architects on projects indoors and outdoors for purposes as city marketing, social safety and arts.
MegaPhone is Phonecall-Controlled, Real-Time, Multi-Player Collaborative Gaming Platform for Big Screens in Public Spaces, but we already said that. What we mean is, it’s a game you control with a phone call.
MegaPhone is NOT a downloadable application that runs on your phone, and it’s NOT a wireless network, like Wifi or Bluetooth.
There are two ways to send input to the display: keypad and voice. The keypad can be used much like a video game controller, and the volume and pitch of the phone’s microphone can also become input in the game.
MegaPhone updates the game state on a shared screen, and can send custom audio and text messages back to each user. MegaPhone uses this mobile channel back to the caller to close the loop on out of home media advertising.
1) A viewer sees the phone number on screen
2) They call the number with any phone, and interact using their microphone and keypad
3) Their mobile carrier forwards us the call
4) The MegaPhone server answers the call and processes the voice and keypress data
5) The MegaPhone server sends the data over the internet
6) The MegaPhone Flash game displays the updated state on the screen
7) The MegaP
hone mobile content server can send the caller SMS, MMS, or digital files
This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion
(download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).
GreenPix – Zero Energy Media Wall – is a groundbreaking project applying sustainable and digital mediatechnology to the curtain wall of Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympics.Featuring the largest color LED display worldwide and the first photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China, the building performs as a self-sufficient organic system, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, mirroring a day’s climatic cycle.The Media Wall will provide the city of Beijing with its first venue dedicated to digital media art, while offering the most radical example of sustainable technology applied to an entire building’s envelope to date. The building will open to the public in May 2008, with a specially commissioned program of video installations and live performances by artists from China, Europe and the US.The project was designed and implemented by Simone Giostra & Partners, a New York-based office with a solid reputation for its innovative curtain walls in Europe and the US, with lighting design and façade engineering by Arup in London and Beijing. Content manager Luisa Gui will coordinate the opening program with software development by New York-based media artist Jeremy Rotsztain.
Greenpix behaves like an organic system, absorbing solar energy during the day and then generating light from the same power that evening. The project promotes the uncompromised integration of sustainable technology in new Chinese architecture, responding to the aggressive and unregulated economic development currently undertaken by the industry, often at the expense of the environment.With the support of leading German manufacturers Schueco and SunWays, the architect Simone Giostra with Arup developed a new technology for laminating photovoltaic cells in a glass curtain wall and oversaw the production of the first glass solar panels by Chinese manufacturer SunTech. The polycrystalline photovoltaic cells are laminated within the glass of the curtain wall and placed with changing density on the entire building’s skin.The density pattern increases building’s performance, allowing natural light when required by interior program, while reducing heat gain and transforming excessive solar radiation into energy for the media wall.
GreenPix is a large-scale display comprising of 2,292 color (RGB) LED’s light points comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. (2.200 m2) monitor screen for dynamic content display. The very large scale and the characteristic low resolution of the screen enhances the abstract visual qualities of the medium, providing an art-specific communication form in contrast to commercial applications of high resolution screens in conventional media façades.
This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion
(download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).
On October 6, Pleinmuseum visited Paris, as part of the Nuit Blanche. In cooperation with the Institut Néerlandais, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and the city of Paris, the pavilion stroke down at Place de la Bastille.
Pleinmuseum is a mobile exhibition pavilion that places itself at the hearts of public life, opens as a flower, takes on new appearances every day and travels on after a while. Every evening from sunset Pleinmuseum will present a variety of the 100% digital collection. In each location also new artists are invited to create a new contribution to Pleinmuseum.
Pleinmuseum is a new concept: an open and flexible museum that is approachable and accessible, placed on a square in the city centre, forming a natural part of urban life. During daytime, the pavilion remains closed and as such symbolically refers to the ‘white cube’, the paradigmatic model of the modernist museum. After sunset, the cube opens itself hydraulically and forms a dynamic architectural installation that embraces space. The white walls become projection screens that continually take on new appearances, like the skin of a chameleon. In this manner, Pleinmuseum becomes a temporary stage for visual communication; a platform through which artists and designers can communicate with a broad audience.
The designer of Pleinmuseum, René van Engelenburg, focuses on the relationship between art and public. He intends to develop projects, mostly mobile, temporary and open architectural structures that forge a dynamic relationship with public space, activating this space as the key physical and conceptual parameter for the ideas of the participating designers and artists.
via: pleinmuseum.nl
Photos: Marc Verhille – Stichting Pleinmuseum
Reprojected is currently on display on the “Seven Screens” in Munich, an installation consisting of seven double-sided state-of-the-art LED-steles, each one of them measuring six metres in height. It transfers and reworks the actual spatial situation of the piece’s site.
In contrast to common filmic language, “reprojected” takes a distanced point of view, which exclusively focusses on the shadows of computer-simulated people. They attain visibility only by means of a light source, which is moving in virtual space between and across the steles.
The video projected onto the “Seven screens” plays with the perception of the space between and introduces a distance between the depicted events and the installation.
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the fifth busiest airport in the world, accommodating more than 61 million travelers per year. In 2006 it undertook a major lighting renovation to both improve visual impact and reduce energy and maintenance concerns by taking advantage of intelligent LED illumination.
The pylons of LAX Gateway are visible to airline passengers at 3,000 feet. A series of dynamic light shows was designed for the new LED-based installation, including a patriotic sequence of red, white and blue to observe the anniversary of September 11, 2001. The distinctive, architectural structures were originally designed as part of a $112 million construction and landscaping program intended to make the airport more welcoming and convenient for passengers. They have since become an iconic component of the Los Angeles cityscape for residents and visitors alike.
Aspire Tower is a national icon for Qatar, the tallest building in the country and is specifically associated with the National Centre of Sports Excellence in the Middle East. The building was to be completed within 15 months for the Asian Games of 2006, and thereafter a focus for events in the sports complex and national celebrations. The lighting had to be very flexible allowing the tower to convey moods and dynamics relating to specific events. Challenges: vast height of the building (300metres); requirements for visibility at considerable distance from the tower; integration with the mesh façade; climatic conditions; very tight timescale. KSLD’s early practical approach allowed the design to develop rapidly so orders could be placed.
Essentially the system consists of 3,800 individually addressable custom LED fittings designed in conjunction with the manufacturer to provide a high-visibility colour-changing node. These are controlled using a vast DMX system programmed through ColourTramp software specially adapted for this project -this was the largest network this system had been installed on at the time. To address thermal protection of the LEDs the output is reduced when the temperature on the board reaches critical thresholds rather than have the unit switch off so that the integrity of the display is maintained albeit at reduced output. One of the effects KSLD wished to create was a strobe-like sparkle. This was achieved by overdriving the LEDs with time-limiting operation to achieve the brightest output possible without causing component damage.
